This blog features my weekly column called "What's up in the sky". It is published every Saturday in the Ellensburg newspaper, Daily Record (http://www.kvnews.com/). While my postings will be most accurate for Central Washington, readers throughout the northern USA may find something of use.

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Saturday: The Kittitas Environmental Education Network (KEEN) invites you to “Get Intimate with the Shrub Steppe” (GISS) at Helen McCabe Park this morning and early afternoon. The CWU Astronomy club will have opportunities for safe solar viewing as well as information about the sky. Go to http://www.kittitasee.net/events/giss2010.html for more information about the entire event. I invite you to Get Intimate with Super Spectacular Saturn (GISSS) tonight. Saturn is four and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above the south horizon at 10 p.m. With a small telescope, you can see the rings of Saturn and at least one of its moons – Titan. With a good pair of 10X50 binoculars and a tripod, Titan will be visible. The “10X” in 10X50 indicated the binoculars have a magnification of ten times. The “50” means that the diameter of the lenses on the front are 50 millimeters. 10X50 is a common size for binoculars.

Sunday: Wake up early this morning for a nice spring shower – a meteor shower. The Eta Aquarid meteor shower peaks just before dawn on Thursday morning. But since this meteor shower has a fairly broad peak range, there will be many more meteors than in the typical pre-dawn sky throughout the week. Meteor showers are named after the constellation from which the meteors appear to originate. The meteors appear to come from a point in the constellation Aquarius near the star Eta. This point is about one fist above the east horizon at 4 a.m. Although dawn is starting to light the sky, you could be rewarded with a few bright, fast meteors. The Eta Aquarid meteors slam into the Earth at about 40 miles per second. They often leave a long trail. The Eta Aquarid meteors are small rocks that have broken off Halley’s Comet.

Monday: Jupiter is a little less than one fist above the east horizon at 5 a.m. Yes, 5… A… M. No one said sky watching was for the faint hearted.

Tuesday: Are you a henpecked husband? King Cepheus was. He was so captivated by his wife Cassiopeia’s beauty that he let her rule their home. You can tell who is boss by looking in the northern sky at 10 p.m. Cassiopeia is the prominent W-shaped grouping of stars two fists above the north horizon. Cepheus is the much dimmer house-shaped grouping of stars about a fist to the right of Cassiopeia.

Wednesday: Happy Birthday dear Hubble Telescope. Happy birthday to you. The Hubble Space Telescope turned 20 years old last week. NASA is celebrating by introducing a new website with a Hubble timeline, movies and an album of iconic Hubble pictures - http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/Hubble20/.

Thursday: Do people think you have a magnetic personality? The star Cor Caroli understands how you feel. Cor Caroli has one of the strongest magnetic fields among main sequence stars similar to our Sun. This strong magnetic field is thought to produce large sunspots that cause the brightness of Cor Caroli to vary. Cor Caroli is nearly straight overhead at 10:30 p.m.

Friday: Mars is four and a half fists above the west-southwest horizon at 10 p.m.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Saturday: You know Metis and Thebe and Adrastea and Amalthea. Io and Ganymede and Callisto and Europa. But do you recall? There are 63 Jovian moons in all. Less than 50 years ago, Jupiter was thought to have only 12 moons. But, astronomers are red-nosed with delight that the advent of supersensitive electronic cameras has caused the number of discovered moons to rapidly increase. Jupiter’s 63 moons range in size from Ganymede, with a diameter of 5,262 kilometers, to S/2002 J12 and S/2003 J9, with a diameter of only one kilometer. Our moon has a diameter of 3,475 kilometers. (One kilometer is 0.62 miles.) Saturn is second place in the moon race with 61 (up from 60 last year at this time). Uranus is next with 27. Then comes Neptune with 13, Mars with 2, and Earth with 1. Even dwarf planets have moons. Pluto has 3, Eris has 1, and Haumea has 2. Eris is an outer solar system object that was discovered in 2005 and named in September of 2006. Because it is larger than Pluto, people called it the tenth planet for a while. Haumea, the newest dwarf planet, was discovered in 2004 and officially named a dwarf planet on September 17, 2008. Jupiter, the moon leader, is just above the east horizon at 5 a.m. Go to http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/objects/planets/A_Guide_to_Planetary_Satellites.html for more information about moons.

Sunday: Saturn is four and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above the south horizon at 10 p.m., about a fist above the Moon.

Monday: The Seven Sisters will be taking lessons from a love goddess for the next few nights. Venus, named for the Roman goddess of love, is near the Pleiades, an open star cluster also called the Seven Sisters for the rest of the week. They are a fist above the west-northwest horizon at 9 p.m.

Tuesday: Do you like pop music? You don’t? So, so what. In the first draft of a song on her latest album “Funhouse”, the singer P!nk wrote “Waiter just took my full moon, and gave it to Jessica Simps”. Coincidence? I think not. Some Native American tribes called the April full moon the full pink moon because its arrival coincided with the blooming of wild ground phlox, a pink wild flower. Spica, the brightest star in the constellation Virgo, must like P!nk because it is about a fist above the moon at 10 p.m.

Wednesday: Mars is five fists above the southwest horizon at 10 p.m.

Thursday: Antares is about a fist to the lower left of the Moon just before midnight tonight

Friday: Hydra the sea serpent rears its ugly head in the southwest sky at 10 p.m. First find Procyon. This bright star is two and a half fists above the west-southwest horizon. Next, find Saturn and Regulus right next to each other, five fists above the southwest horizon. Now, draw an imaginary line between Procyon and Regulus. Just below the midway point of that line, you should see a clump of stars that make the shape of a crooked house. This is the head of Hydra.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Saturday: Mars is five fists held upright and at arm’s length above the southwest horizon at 10 p.m. Less than a pinky width below Mars is the Beehive Cluster, an open star cluster of about 50 stars, all about 570 light years from Earth. The Beehive Cluster is a great object to look at through binoculars because it is big, taking up as much space in the sky as nine full moons. For the next few nights, Mars is an excellent marker.
If you get up before sunrise or stay up very late any night this week, be on the lookout for meteors coming from nearly straight overhead near dawn. The Lyrid meteor shower is active this week.

Sunday: The nighttime stars take little more than an instant to rise. The Moon takers about two minutes to rise. That’s absolutely speedy compared to the constellation Virgo which takes four hours to rise. The first star in Virgo rises at 4:30 in the afternoon today. Spica, the brightest star in the constellation, rises at 7:30. By 9 p.m., Spica is a fist and a half above the southeast horizon. The northern section of Virgo will be marked by the planet Saturn for the next few months. Saturn is three and a half fists above the southeast horizon at 9 p.m.

Monday: How many of you know your 12 nearest neighbors? I thought so. Why don’t you go out and meet them right now. I’ll wait. Yes, of course bring them cookies. No, not those stale ones you hate.
Are you back? That means you obviously didn’t meet your 12 nearest stellar neighbors. Including the Sun, there are 12 stars within 10 light years of Earth. The most well known are the Sun (obviously); Proxima Centauri, the nearest star other than the Sun; Alpha Centauri, a bright binary star visible from the tropics and the Southern Hemisphere; and Sirius, the brightest star in the nighttime sky. Sirius is the largest and most luminous star in our neighborhood. It is one and a half fists above the southwest horizon at 9 p.m.

Tuesday: The Lyrid meteor shower peaks over the next two nights. The meteors appear to come from a point to the right of the bright bluish star Vega in the constellation Lyra the lyre. This point is about three fists above the east-northeast horizon at midnight tonight and close to straight overhead near dawn. The best time to look is just before dawn since that is when the radiant, or point from which the meteors appear to come, is high in the sky. For most of the next two nights, the nearly first quarter Moon will be below the horizon meaning the sky will be dark enough to see dim meteors. This shower produces about 15 meteors, tiny rocks that hit the Earth and burn up in the atmosphere, every hour during the peak. The Lyrid meteor shower has historical interest because it was one of the first ones observed. Chinese records say “stars fell like rain” in the shower of 687 B.C.

Wednesday: Vega is two fists above the northeast horizon at 11 p.m.

Thursday: This month, Astronomers Without Borders is organizing “30 Nights of Star Peace” to promote staring the night sky across national borders, one section of the world at a time. For the next three nights (4/22-4/24), 108 to 144 degrees west longitude is celebrating Star Peace. Ellensburg is 120 degrees west longitude. If the only thing you do is look up at the night sky and spot Mars six fists above the southwest horizon at 9 p.m., please recognize that some of your neighbors in Canada and Mexico are doing the same thing. Go to http://www.starpeace.org/ for more information.

Friday: Jupiter is just creeping out of the glare of the rising Sun. It is about a half a fist above the east horizon at 5:15 a.m.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Saturday: This month is Global Astronomy Month (www.gam-awb.org). Astronomers around the world want to reconnect people with the night sky, thus their slogan: One People, One Sky. For a summary of Global Astronomy Month events, click on “Global Programs” at the top of the left-hand column of this website. The feature event for this week, April 11-16, is Saturn Watch. You can informally participate in Saturn Watch by watching Saturn. Imagine that! Saturn is four fists held upright and at arm’s length above the southwest horizon at 10 p.m. See if its position changes throughout the week.

Sunday: Jupiter is a half a fist below the waning crescent Moon at 6 a.m. They are low in the eastern sky, just beyond the glare of the nearly rising Sun.

Monday: Avast ye matey. Swab the poop deck. Pirates love astronomy. In fact, the term “poop” in poop deck comes from the French word for stern (poupe) which comes for the Latin word Puppis. Puppis is a constellation that represents the raised stern deck of Argo Navis, the ship used by Jason and the Argonauts in Greek mythology. Argo Nevis was an ancient constellation that is now divided between the constellations Puppis, Vela and Carina. The top of Puppis is about a fist and a half to the left of the bright star Sirius in the south-southwest sky at 9 p.m. Rho Puppis, one of the brightest stars in the constellation, is about one and a half fists above the south-southwest horizon at this time.

Tuesday: Mars is five and a half fists above the southwest horizon at 10 p.m.

Wednesday: Ours isn’t the only solar system with planets. Near the top of the constellation Cancer the crab at the extreme limit of naked eye visibility is 55 Cancri, a binary star system 41 light years from Earth and the star with the most known planets other than our Sun. There are five known planets in orbit around 55 Cancri, six fists above the southwest horizon at 10 p.m. Four of the planets are similar in size to Jupiter and one is similar in size to Neptune. It is unlikely that any of these planets have life and almost certainly not complex life as it exists on Earth. For more information about planets orbiting stars other than our Sun, called extrasolar planets, go to http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/.

Thursday: At 9 p.m., Venus is less than half a fist to the upper left of the Moon and Mercury is about a finger-width below the Moon. They are all about a half a fist above the west horizon.

Friday: Remember the old saying: April showers bring… meteors. The Lyrid meteor shower is typically active from tonight to April 27. The meteors appear to come from a point to the right of the bright bluish star Vega in the constellation Lyra the lyre. This point is about three fists above the east-northeast horizon at midnight tonight and close to straight over head near dawn. The best time to look is just before dawn since that is when the radiant, or point from which the meteors appear to come, is high in the sky. Also, there is no Moon visible at this time to obscure dimmer meteors. As your Mother might say, dress warm and sit in a comfortable chair for maximum enjoyment. Meteors are tiny rocks that hit the Earth and burn up in the atmosphere. This is typically one of the least interesting major meteor showers of the year with about 10-20 meteors per hour. However, it is also one of the most unpredictable. As recently as 1982, there were 90 meteors visible during a single hour. In addition, the Lyrid meteor shower has historical interest because it was one of the first ones observed. Chinese records say “stars fell like rain” in the shower of 687 B.C.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.